consume

(Photos: UnBeige and Courtesy David Stark Design)

David Stark has applied his artist’s eye and bricoleur’s ingenuity to the retail scene with Wood Shop, a temporary takeover of fellow RISD alum Nina Freudenberger‘s Haus Interior in New York. As you may recall from our recent interview with the event designer, his “surprise ambush” has filled the cozy homegoods emporium with limited-edition goodies inspired by a woodworker’s studio, from hand-crocheted saw pillows and rugged Carhartt-brown canvas placemats to a tool box worth of delicate gold pendants and hand-turned poplar vases that suggest a collaboration between Giorgio Morandi and Bob Vila. The woodstravaganza lasts through Monday, February 27.

The idea for Wood Shop stemmed from a previous project for which Stark and his team created an entire house out of SmartPly, which provided a cheeky backdrop for showcasing the client company’s new collection of homegoods. “Some of the things that we made for that were so fun that we thought, wow, these could be great products,” said Stark the other day, as he guided us through Wood Shop and ended up in front of a delicious-looking dessert, made entirely of SmartPly. “The cake really came out of that kind of thing. I have a weird sense of humor, so if I walked into a store, that would be the first thing I would be drawn toward.”

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Last July, after the freshly launched design flash sale site Fab.com had landed its first round of venture funding (a cool $8 million, led by Menlo Ventures), founder Jason Goldberg touted the site’s diverse mix of merch, from chairs and stationery to bikes and biscotti. There was just one category he said that the company would steer clear of: fashion. “We don’t have any ambition in the fashion category,” Goldberg told Venturebeat, in what sounded like an attempt to differentiate his site from the flash-sale fray (read: Gilt Groupe). “That’s more about liquidation; our model is more about opening a new channel for suppliers.” Five months and $40 million in Series B funding later, Fab.com has flip-flopped on fashion and acquired FashionStake, which launched in the fall of 2010 as a kind of Kickstarter-style fundraising platform for independent fashion designers and evolved into an Etsy-like marketplace for their wares. “We’re going to do the exact same thing we’ve done with design products to fashion,” wrote Goldberg today in a blog post announcing the deal. “Make no mistake, we’re keenly aware that there are plenty of sites that sell high-end fashion for a discount. That’s not Fab. We’re doing fashion the Fab way; designed to make you smile.” Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but FashionStake founders Vivian Weng and Daniel Gulati will be joining Fab.com. According to Weng and Gulati, FashionStake will relaunch on Fab.com in mid-February.

A mere 100 days remain before the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking, and while the tragic event has already been immortalized in books, films, exhibitions, and a crowd-pleasing Broadway musical, expect a surge of interest in the doomed ocean liner come spring. One enterprising travel agent is planning a series of Titanic Memorial Cruises, on which history buffs and tempters of fate alike will set sail for the site where the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage, “to pay their respects at a special memorial service to take place at the exact time the Titanic sank 100 years before.” Meanwhile, a cache of approximately 5,500 artifacts recovered from a series of expeditions to the wreck are to be auctioned in April at Guernsey’s in New York. The only catch? The artifacts will be sold as a single lot. Seller RMS Titanic, Inc., a subsidiary of Premier Exhibitions and the only company permitted by law to recover objects from the wreck of Titanic, puts the value of the artifacts at $189 million, a 2007 estimate that includes the costs of salvage, lab operations, and exhibition rights but not the intellectual property acquired from the 2010 expedition. No word yet as to what is among the stuff to be sold. In the meantime, treat yourself to jewelry made from bits of coal recovered from Titanic or invest in some replica china.

Can’t make it to the Museum at FIT’s brilliant Daphne Guinness exhibition before it closes next Saturday? Peek into the style icon’s colorful imagination with her new limited-edition collection for MAC Cosmetics. Now available nationwide, the 24-piece line includes chilly-toned lipsticks, eye shadow, and nail polish named for some of Guinness’s earthy favorites (Japanese spring, azalea blossom, seasoned plum) and out-of-this-world fascinations (red dwarf, borealis, nebula).

After MAC approached Guinness about a collaboration, she hunkered down with art supplies in her room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “I had parchment papers spread all over the floor and all sorts of different powders and watercolors that I was mixing together, and my finished pieces were drying on the balcony,” says Guinness, who points to Old Masters such as Titian and Francisco de Zurbarán as a perennial source of inspiration. “And I might say that I’m absolutely fascinated by butterflies and outer space. Blimey, I have pictures from the Hubble space telescope and some of those are just extraordinary, and if you look very closely at a butterfly’s wings or even perhaps a jellyfish, you’ll see there are similarities.” Among her favorite items from the MAC collection is Hyperion, a frosty blue-green nail polish. Explains Guinness, “It resembles this almost grey, steely light that is pure Whistler from the 1890s, when he still had fog in the paintings.”

Looking for even bolder makeup? Next up for MAC is a collection created with rara avis Iris Apfel. Stock up on Toco Toucan (fuschia) nail polish and Early Bird (bright coral) eyeshadow beginning Thursday.

Working at the interface of landscape and architecture, nature and culture, public and private, Diana Balmori continues to blur the boundaries with innovative green roofs, floating islands, and temporary landscapes that get people talking in more ways than one. In A Landscape Manifesto (Yale University Press), Balmori described her interest in “shaping spaces…not objects within the landscape,” and her new book, Groundwork: Between Landscape and Architecture (Monacelli), presents 25 projects that mark exciting points of innovation along the building/environment continuum. Co-written with architect Joel Sanders, an associate professor at Yale, Groundwork examines how the likes of Zaha Hadid, Snøhetta, and Aranda/Lasch are linking indoors and outdoors, around the world. “Many books about landscape romanticize nature as a universal palliative and bid designers to consult the ‘genius of place.’ This is not one of them,” write Balmori and Sanders in the book’s preface. “Instead it is an appeal to designers to pursue a new approach that overcomes the false dichotomy between architecture and landscape.”

Have a suggestion for the UnBeige Gift Guide? E-mail us at unbeige@mediabistro.com.
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Decades from now, when the rapid pace of technological change has rendered all of our circa 2011 digital files unreadable and our grandchildren chuckle at the mention of floppy disks, we’ll still have flipbooks. The original motion pictures meet the YouTube age thanks to FlipClips, a Los Angeles-based company that creates custom flipbooks from digital videos. Simply upload six to 30 seconds of video footage (up to 25 MB worth) and choose from an array of size and design options. In a week or so, you’ll be mesmerized by the sturdy pages of your own flipbook. At $11.99 each, they’re memorable alternatives to conventional greeting cards, invitations, or even business cards, and recipients will flip for their analog charm.

Have a suggestion for the UnBeige Gift Guide? E-mail us at unbeige@mediabistro.com.

Previously on the UnBeige Gift Guide:
♦ A is for Adjaye’s African Metropolitan Architecture
♦ B is for Brinca Dada Bennett House
♦ C is for Can Can Pendant Light
♦ D is for Dress by D-Crit
♦ E is for Eberle’s Empire of Space

This next item in the UnBeige Gift Guide combines four of our favorite favorite things: modernism, minimalism, photography, and Todd Eberle. A longtime contributor to Vanity Fair, Eberle defies categorization: one day he’s revealing the beauty in overlooked architectural spaces (abstracted elevator banks, ceilings, bathrooms) or immortalizing the works of Donald Judd and the next he’s making a luminous portrait of the uber-multitasker: Martha Stewart. Part of the pleasure of paging through Eberle’s 30-year career in Empire of Space (Rizzoli) is that the book, designed by Richard Pandiscio, unfolds as a series of paired images, visual juxtapositions inspired by the Walker Evans book, First and Last. “It allowed me absolute freedom to mix subjects,” Eberle has said. “I wanted to have my first book represent what I do. I think it’s hard to come up with a point of view when making a book and the pairings solved many things for me.”

Have a suggestion for the UnBeige Gift Guide? E-mail us at unbeige@mediabistro.com.

Previously on the UnBeige Gift Guide:
♦ A is for Adjaye’s African Metropolitan Architecture
♦ B is for Brinca Dada Bennett House
♦ C is for Can Can Pendant Light
♦ D is for Dress by D-Crit

D-Crit is dressed to impress for the holidays. The design criticism MFA program at New York’s School of Visual Arts has turned to matters sartorial for the second volume in its chapbook series. Edited by D-Crit faculty member Andrea Codrington Lippke and 2011 D-Crit grad Aileen Kwun and designed by Walker Design and Matthew Rezac, Dress is a collection of 11 essays on the unique style of public figures ranging from Julian Schnabel and Steve Jobs to Pope Benedict XVI and Dora the Explorer. Pajamas and mock turtlenecks and Prada loafers, ¡Dios mío! “On the journey from person to persona, each celebrity comes to be represented by a host of props that act as visual leitmotifs containing meanings and messages for those able to untangle the associations,” notes Lipke, who teaches the Criticism Lab course in which the book’s essays were generated. Copies of Dress are available on Lulu.com. Priced at $10, the slim paperback makes a perfect stocking stuffer…but what does the stocking signify?

Have a suggestion for the UnBeige Gift Guide? E-mail us at unbeige@mediabistro.com.

Previously on the UnBeige Gift Guide:
♦ A is for Adjaye’s African Metropolitan Architecture
♦ B is for Brinca Dada Bennett House
♦ C is for Can Can Pendant Light

Marcel Wanders loves a flash of brocade. The prolific Dutch designer has made a cheeky signature out of mixing ornate patterns with clean-lined shapes, bold colors, and modern materials for projects ranging from theatrical interiors and iconic chairs to MAC cosmetics and harlequin-patterned “jester” socks for British department store Marks and Spencer. Our gift guide pick is the Can Can pendant light ($232 at YLighting), which Wanders describes as “a dancing, seductive lamp that only shows her hidden secrets from a more private position.” Designed for FLOS, the linear suspension light conceals a delicate floral decoration that filters the light as it is diffused. During ICFF, FLOS’s New York showroom celebrated Can Can with the help of a tattoo artist, who was on hand to emblazon Wanders-drawn decorative flourishes on willing flesh, and now the company has teamed up with YLighting and Wanders to host the Pattern Play Design Contest. Design lovers are invited to apply the intricate inner pattern of the Can Can pendant light in “unexpected places.” And with this group of judges—Wanders, FLOS CEO Piero Gandini, and Sean Calahan, CEO of YLighting—the more creative and unusual the better. Entries are due by January 15, and full contest details are here.

Have a suggestion for the UnBeige Gift Guide? E-mail us at unbeige@mediabistro.com.

Previously on the UnBeige Gift Guide:
♦ A is for Adjaye’s African Metropolitan Architecture
♦ B is for Brinca Dada Bennett House

Perhaps there’s a case to be made for inoculating youngsters against bad architecture through toys such as Barbie’s Dreamhouse (read: pink plastic McMansion), but why not start ‘em off with the good stuff? Enter Brinca Dada, maker of beautiful and fun toys with an architectural twist. For our A-Z UnBeige Gift Guide, we’ve selected the company’s Bennett House, a De Stijl-flavored take on the New York brownstone. Made of CARB-certified woods (including bamboo floors), the three-foot-tall house features LED lights, solar panels, and an elevator as well as a rooftop pool and glass rail balconies off the master bedroom and children’s bedroom. “Townhouses are typically a stack of floors with a few windows on each floor, and no inside/outside relationship,” says architect Tim Boyle, who designed the Bennett House for Brinca Dada. “I prefer architecture that reveals structure and engineering, hence windows extend past floors to show the weight and thickness of the structure.” We suggest putting this mod dollhouse under the tree along with the company’s collection of clean-lined mini-furniture and a copy of Ida van Zijl‘s Gerrit Rietveld (Phaidon).

Have a suggestion for the UnBeige Gift Guide? E-mail us at unbeige@mediabistro.com.

Previously on the UnBeige Gift Guide:
♦ A is for Adjaye’s African Metropolitan Architecture